Josh Allen will attempt to reach a couple of milestones on Sunday while also not becoming part of what Myles Garrett hopes is a record-setting day.
Allen and the Buffalo Bills can clinch a seventh consecutive playoff spot with a win at Cleveland and a loss or tie by either Indianapolis or Houston. Buffalo would also wrap up a spot with a tie and a loss by either the Colts or Texans.
The Bills (10-4) have won four of five, including rallying from a 21-point
deficit to defeat AFC East rival New England last Sunday.
Allen needs one more touchdown to become the NFL’s first player with 300 scores before age 30.
Allen has accounted for 37 touchdowns this season (25 passing, 12 rushing). That was tied with the Los Angeles Rams’ Matthew Stafford going into Week 16.
“I think the main part there is us winning. This is a really, really good defense that we’re about to face. And it’s going to be all hands on deck,” said Allen, who has 15 touchdowns (10 passing, five rushing) in his last five games.
However, Allen is also trying not to become the quarterback who allowed Garrett to match or break the league’s single-season sack record. The All-Pro pass rusher is at 21 1/2 and needs 1 1/2 to surpass Pro Football Hall of Famer Michael Strahan and Pittsburgh’s TJ Watt.
Garrett has one sack against Allen in two meetings. Allen has been sacked 33 times this season, tied for sixth most in the league — 19 more than last year and five short of his 2019 career high.
“I do like highlight tapes, but I don’t like being a part of other people’s highlight tapes,” Allen said. “He’s one of the greatest of all time. He is a force to be reckoned with. And we’ve got to be ready for everything that they can throw at us.”
Bills coach Sean McDermott knows an elite defender when he sees one.
“You can almost put sometimes three people on him, and he just runs through it all. He’s just powerful, big, explosive, fast, has a feel for the game,” McDermott said. “You watch him, and you’re going, ‘That’s special.’ There are only a few people who have ever done that in the league.”
Browns defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz knows the more chances Garrett gets to rush Allen when dropping back, the more opportunities he will have to get sacks.
The Bills, however, come in averaging a league-best 158.5 rushing yards per game. James Cook is second in the NFL with 1,415 yards rushing and has at least 100 yards from scrimmage in 11 games this season.
The Browns have allowed 137.9 rushing yards per game over their last seven contests.
“If Buffalo comes out and runs it 60 times, you’re not going to get any sacks. If he gets a lot of opportunities, his success rate is pretty high and, you know, we’re a pretty good pass-rush team, so I like those odds,” Schwartz said. “That’s the message we have, is we got to force teams to drop back and throw, and don’t let them control the game with the run game.”
The Browns allow just 32.7% rushing success and hit runners behind the line on nearly half their carries.
With kicker Matt Prater out with a quadriceps injury, the Bills are turning to Michael Badgley, who has seven seasons of NFL experience and was cut by Indianapolis two weeks ago after missing his third extra-point attempt in seven games with the Colts.
Badgley broke into the NFL with the Chargers in 2018 and made his debut in Los Angeles’ 28-14 win at Cleveland. Badgley was good on all five extra-point attempts and hit a 44-yard field goal.
Browns rookie Shedeur Sanders will make his fifth NFL start on Sunday. Sanders was picked off three times in last Sunday’s 31-3 loss at Chicago.
Sanders has faced pressure on at least 52% of his dropbacks in the last two games. When given four-plus seconds to throw, he is 5 of 28 for 83 yards and one interception.
“It’s more structured. Structured as it is more organized,” Sanders said on the difference between defenses in college and the NFL. “I see what they’re doing. Each and every rep is very helpful. It’s knowing what exactly I’m looking at pre-snap. But a lot of that comes with trial and error.”
Buffalo’s first kick return. Ray Davis is averaging a league-best 32.4 yards per return. Cleveland allowed a 42-yard return to Tennessee’s Chimere Dike, and Chicago’s Devin Duvernay ran the opening kickoff back 52 yards last week.
“I think he’s got good vision, he’s got good contact balance, he does an excellent job of attacking coverage downhill,” Browns special teams coach Bubba Ventrone said of Davis. “When you’re covering kickoffs, it really does come down to the fundamentals of the game. Leveraging blocks, block destruction, shedding blocks, tackling, all those things factor. And I feel like the times when we’ve had issues are when we’re not executing those necessary fundamentals of the game.”
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AP Sports Writer John Wawrow in Orchard Park, New York, contributed to this report.
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